During the 1980s and early 1990s, when computer game titles shipped primarily as cartridges, software developers eked out redundant capabilities in their games by including special expansion chips inside the game cartridges themselves. The well-nig simple of these enabled bank switching (a technique that allowed a C.P.U. to access many Crash or ROM than usual), but the chips went on to spring u dramatically in scope: adding RAM, extra sound-synthesis capabilities, graphical tweaks, and eventually 3D plane figure art using DSP Colorado-processors. In the slides ahead, we'll get a load at a handful of classic inward hardware expansions that allowed game developers to push game consoles past their inherent design limitations.
CBS Ram down PLUS (1983)
Image away CBS Software
The Atari 2600 was a spectacularly primitive automobile aside today's standards, shipping with a bare 128 bytes of Read/write memor and no frame buffer. Those limitations actually increased its lifespan in the long haul because they opened the door for new computer programming techniques and in-pickup hardware expansions to keep the system in question. The CBS RAM PLUS Saratoga chip was one such hardware expansion chip; it added 256 bytes of lendable RAM, which allowed for slightly more sophisticated game intention—when tucked into copies of the fraud-3D Tunnel Runner, seen present.
Videopac C7010 Chess Mental faculty (1983)
What we know American Samoa the Magnavox Odyssey 2 (1979) in the U.S. first launched as the Philips Videopac G7000 in Europe. IT included a reasonably wimpy Intel 8048 Mainframe and 64 bytes of RAM (symmetric less than the Atari 2600). When it came to playing a computationally intensive game of computer Cheat, the Videopac couldn't cut IT, so developers devised an add up-on computer module permanently bound to the game pickup. The module enclosed an 8-bit, 4.43MHz NSC800 CPU and 2KB of RAM. It was an valuable solution, but at least information technology made playing chess possible.
Unlike every other instance in our survey, this co-processor wasn't small adequate to hide inside a gamey pickup itself, only it does provide the most extreme representative of single-use game expansion hardware I've ever seen.
Activision DPC (1984)
Image by Tomark Edzwyn
When it came time to create a subsequence to his Atari 2600 platforming-classicPitfall!, David Crane craved a dramatic mellisonant soundtrack to play along the game. Unfortunately, the 2600 hardware wasn't powerful enough to play the song and handle the graphics at the same time, so Stephen Crane devised a chip called the "Display Processor Chip at" (or DPC for short—which, not coincidently, are David Crane's initials). The DPC acted as a sort of CPU subordinate, taking data quickly and putting information technology where IT needed to depart so more things could happen at once—such arsenic reinforced graphics and sound. Grus intended to use the splintering in other 2600 games, but the 1983-84 telecasting game crash put those plans hard to rest.
Atari Embedded POKEY (1987)
When General Computer Corporation created a surveil-high for the Atari 2600 in the early 1980s, they stuck with its predecessor's sound processor (TIA) for backwards compatibility. Away the time the console was actually released in 1986, the 2600 sound chip had preserved poorly. GCC had a backup design, which enclosed embedding an Atari Jailhouse sound chip into all game cartridge for enhanced complete. Atari engineers had originally designed the legendary Jerkwater profound chip in the 1970s for use with the loyal's original 8-bit computer stemma, the Atari 400 and 800, but IT was still fairly private-enterprise aside 1986. Only two 7800 games shipped with a POKEY chip indoors: Ballblazer and Commando.
Nintendo MMC5 (1989)
Image by Nolan Pierson
If you numerate its Nipponese origins, the Nintendo Entertainment System's hardware design remained on the market from 1983 all the way to 1995. The secret to the NES's amazing lifetime was its reliance on enclosed cartridge chips titled Memory Management Controllers (MMC), of which Nintendo discharged seven over the years.
The most advanced of these, MMC5, included an extra 1K of RAM and a wide grab-cup of tea of retention manipulation tricks to allow games with superior graphical richness. The U.S. release of Castlevania III notably enclosed a MMC5 chip, which allowed detailed stained-glass backgrounds and smooth vertical scrolling, among former benefits.
Nintendo Super FX (1993)
Image by CobraSA
Equal its predecessor, the Super NES also relied heavily on pickup enhancement chips to extend its lifespan by providing newsworthy new graphic and sound capabilities. The most famous of these is beyond any doubt the openly hyped "Super FX" chip, which brought high-frame-rate polygonal 3D artwork to the 16-bit soothe for the first time through the game Star Charles James Fox. Revisions of the Crack FX chip also allowed advanced 2D fairy-scaling effects like those seen in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.
Sega SVP (1994)
Double by Martin Petersson
Upon its unfreeze in the arcade in 1992, Virtua Racing became a landmark in 3D polygonal gambling with its smooth frame rate and detailed visuals for the time. When information technology came time to work that wizard home plate to its popular Genesis console, Sega turned to a husky co-processor called the SVP—a DSP chip pouring at a rumored 23MHz that enabled enough on-the-fly calculations for the Genesis to render an enjoyable habitation version of the 3D racing game. The port had its drawbacks, though: Aside from not being as detailed arsenic the arcade release, its enclosed chip proved dearly-won, pushing the MSRP of the crippled up to $100. Probably due to cost concerns (and the impending 32X enhancement), Sega never secondhand the SVP chip in a Genesis game once more.
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